Light moments in a drab metropolis

Tokyo can be a drag. At least if you are a photographer trying to tackle what can appear on the surface as one of the most unphotogenic cities in the world. A scarcity of obviously iconic buildings, combined with cramped, crowded and twisted spaces — usually crisscrossed with unsightly wires and hemmed in by humdrum, functional architecture encrusted with garish advertising guff — present a unique challenge.

If a photographer can make it here, they can make it anywhere. But getting to the top can be a lifetime's work, as proven by the career of Yutaka Takanashi, showcased in "Field Notes of Light," a major retrospective running till March 8 at the Museum of Modern Art Tokyo.

With almost 300 photographs, mainly detailing aspects of Tokyo since the 1960s, the first impression is of a bewildering array of images — some eye-catching, others intriguing, but also a great many dull and pointless. Taken together, though, they tell a fascinating tale of an innovative photographer who struggled with, and occasionally mastered, his unruly subject matter.

As the exhibition makes clear, Takanashi's career is characterized by a range of carefully thought out methodologies, which, once decided on, are rigorously applied for the duration, only to be supplanted by a different methodology for the next series. For example, the photos from his first one-man show, "SOMETHING ELSE" (1960), used an approach inspired by Surrealism. Seeking out the odd juxtapositions that Tokyo routinely throws up, he attempted to isolate them from their everyday context by shooting them head-on, in cloudy or shady light, thus avoiding the normalizing effects of perspective and sunshine.

What is surprising about the series — and subsequent ones — is the degree to which Takanashi sticks to his chosen modus operandi. Perhaps because of this relentless imposition of a particular approach, the images in "SOMETHING ELSE" have a fussy and stilted quality that makes for rather dull viewing.

By the late '60s, however, Takanashi could be found at the opposite end of the spectrum. His "Towards the City" series of photos, published as a book in 1974, shows him aligned with the sensibility-led photography of Takuma Nakahira, Daido Moriyama and the short-lived but influential photo magazine Provoke. These artists took a much more gestural approach in which photography was seen as an act aimed at causing a reaction, and the photograph regarded as a record of atmosphere rather than light. As a result, they were known for capturing edgy images that were often blurred, grainy, highly contrasted, titled, and off center. But while the style became a creed for other photographers, for Takanashi it seems to have just been another precisely defined methodology that he explored, and then left behind.

Like other successful photographers, Takanashi realized that one of the best ways to capture the unsightly mess of Tokyo was to filter it through the people who lived here. This led to his "Tokyoites" series, originally published in Camera Mainichi in 1966, with a later series in the early '80s. Using a snapshot technique with wide-angle lenses that aimed to capture the relationship between the subject and the background, he succeeded in capturing not only the faces and places of post-Olympics Tokyo, but also the mood and atmosphere — a dubious cocktail of naive materialism, ill-fitting optimism and stoic drudgery.

"Seibu Department Store, Toshima- Ku, 25 April" (1965) shows a fashionable female shopper studiously ignoring a couple of high school louts sitting on the store escalator. While the scene is ostensibly one of new technology and ascendant consumerism, there is a hint of samurai surliness in the demeanor of the schoolboys, and you could imagine that underneath the shopper's thin veneer of sophistication lies the thick skin of a country girl gone urban.

The attempt to capture the traces of the past buried under the modern metropolis implicit in this photograph is one of the recurring themes of Takanashi's work. It can be found more explicitly in the series "Machi" (1975-77) and "Visages of a Metropolis" (1986-88). In the first of these he used long exposures with a large- format camera to capture sharply detailed views of old shop fronts and interiors in Tokyo's downtown area. By using color, he avoided the easy nostalgia of black and white and maintained a sense of reality.

While "Machi" used the natural editing supplied by shop fronts and interiors to exclude the compositionally awkward detritus of the city, "Visages of a Metropolis" achieved the same trick by shooting at night. Aspects of 1920s and '30s architecture, such as an Art Deco entrance to Inaricho Station, Kiyosubashi Bridge and the Jintan Tower, are all carefully framed in shadow, allowing their eloquence to emerge above the surrounding urban noise.

A comparatively recent series, "Kakoi Machi" (2007), shows Takanashi still struggling with the difficult subject matter of a city that ruthlessly overlays anything quaint, charming or picturesque with new commercial development. These pictures show the unsightly aspects of Tokyo's constant urban renewal — construction sites, steel walls to hide them, roads blocked off with traffic cones, buildings swathed in blue tarpaulin and other such common sites. By focusing on these aspects, Takanashi seems to be striving for the city's essence, as if that might finally reveal some beauty.

One image in this series, "Ikebukuro, Jan. 2006," shows a road junction with zebra crossings and the usual collection of nondescript buildings caught in reflected light from the gleaming glass front of an unseen office building. The chance alignment of these random elements creates a fleeting moment of beauty, suggesting that even this ugly old hag, Tokyo, scarred by too many face lifts, can still surprise us with an occasional pretty smile.

Do you think Tokyo is one of the most unphotogenic cities in the world? Please send your opinions to [email protected].